Netflix somehow says no to Michelle Yeoh, ditches The Brothers Sun
The comedy/action/drama series starred Oscar winner Yeoh as the matriarch of a family of hardcore gangsters (and one improv student)
Netflix is—despite all indications that it’s just a terrible idea—apparently getting out of the Michelle Yeoh business, announcing tonight that it’s canceling single-season action-comedy-drama series The Brothers Sun. And not just any kind of cancellation: This is a Friday night kill, the TV cancellation equivalent of an early morning walk of shame, head down to avoid eye contact with a judgmental world.
Starring Yeoh, plus Justin Chien, Sam Song Li, Joon Lee, and Highdee Kuan, the series was co-created by Glee’s Brad Falchuk, working with newcomer Byron Wu. The series focused on a young med student/improv aficionado (ugh) named Bruce Sun, who discovers that his estranged family are some of the most feared and renowned gangsters in Taipei, with his family’s violent past intruding on his slacker lifestyle. Yeoh starred as the family matriarch, navigating her two sons’ very different attitudes toward life, while also expressing her own ambitions after her gangster husband is put into a coma in the show’s first episode.
Released in January of 2024, Sun was (alongside Disney+’s American Born Chinese) one of the first major projects Yeoh embarked on after reminding Hollywood (not for the first, second, or third time) how goddamn good she was with her Oscar-winning turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once. The series drew strong reviews and topped at least a few weeks of Netflix’s weekly charts, but ultimately didn’t pick up enough of an audience to make it a bona fide streaming sensation—or buy itself a second season to build on the threads set down in the first. Yeoh, at least, will stay busy in the aftermath: She stars in this year’s Wicked adaptation, has her own Star Trek spinoff still in the works, and has plugged in to James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, which’ll likely keep her in credits for at least the next decade.